1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to shake splitting apparatus and methods and more particularly to apparatus and methods wherein a single operator can perform the feeding, splitting, trimming and stacking of split shakes all at a single operating station.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various types of shake splitting mills and methods have been employed in the past. Except for totally manual splitting techniques where a workman takes a shake bolt or block and with a hammer and froe splits each shake from the bolt, all of the systems have mechanized to some extent the shake splitting operation. The manual shake splitting technique is undesirable because the splits must follow exactly the irregularities of the grain of the wood, the process is very slow, tiresome to the workman, and generally is very disorganized with the split and untrimmed shakes lying in disarray around the working area.
Many of the difficulties of manual shake splitting are eliminated by mechanized techniques which start a split in the sawn kerf. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,805,861, RE. 28,583 and 3,776,287 are representative. In these mechanized techniques, however, the workman had no control over the separation of the shake from the block thus requiring piecemeal separate operations and the various operations frequently involved different workmen.
Trimmers for trimming shakes to width and length are usually powered and create a safety problem in shake mills.